A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
by Tim Wise

For those who still can’t grasp the concept of white privilege, or who are constantly looking for some easy-to-understand examples of it, perhaps this list will help.

White privilege is when you can get pregnant at seventeen like Bristol Palin and everyone is quick to insist that your life and that of your family is a personal matter, and that no one has a right to judge you or your parents, because "every family has challenges," even as black and Latino families with similar "challenges" are regularly typified as irresponsible, pathological and arbiters of social decay.

The difference in this case is not race or privilege; it is in the response to the challenge faced. Liberals may indeed characterize Bristol Palin’s situation as a personal matter but people of character view the response to her situation by both she and her parents and the family of the young man to be what sets their situation apart from those whose response to similar circumstance is very different. Abortion-on-demand coupled with no fathers in the home coupled with no values taught in the home and an insistence that it’s ok to sleep around with whomever you like and create unwanted children for taxpayers to support is what sets the scenarios apart. Not race. Not privilege.

White privilege is when you can call yourself a "bleepin' redneck," like Bristol Palin’s boyfriend does, and talk about how if anyone messes with you, you'll "kick their bleepin' a--," and talk about how you like to "shoot s---" for fun, and still be viewed as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be) rather than a thug.

After researching the voracity of the notion that people “view Levi Johnston as a responsible, all-American boy (and a great son-in-law to be)” I have found no evidence that that sentiment has been made by anyone credible or directly involved with the story.   A major difference in the way this young man and his indiscretions are viewed however may very well be found in the fact that unlike so many other young people today, he is (apparently) stepping up to the father/husband plate and actually doing the “right thing”. Generally when a person (youthful or otherwise) makes a mistake and then learns from that mistake, apologizes and moves to right the wrongs that they have committed, they are indeed given - not a pass - but forgiveness. Forgiveness in this case is manifest in the way that the people involved have stepped up to help and encourage the newly found character to thrive. This has nothing to do with race or privilege; it is the natural result of forgiveness and grace extended to any imperfect human being regardless of race or privilege. 

White privilege is when you can attend four different colleges in six years like Sarah Palin did (one of which you basically failed out of, then returned to after making up some coursework at a community college), and no one questions your intelligence or commitment to achievement, whereas a person of color who did this would be viewed as unfit for college, and probably someone who only got in in the first place because of affirmative action.

It is very easy to armchair the situations of people based on anecdotal information. Things and circumstances happen to people every day causing them to “loose focus” for a time. People of character and quality eventually get up and back on track. This makes you neither unintelligent nor lazy or anything else. It’s simply a part of the human condition to which we are all a party. Neither race nor privilege has the least bit to do with it. When you get back up to keep on fighting through to another day you are a winner. Privilege and race don’t enter into it at all.

White privilege is when you can claim that being mayor of a town smaller than most medium-sized colleges, and then Governor of a state with about the same number of people as the lower fifth of the island of Manhattan, makes you ready to potentially be president, and people don’t all pi$$ on themselves with laughter, while being a black U.S. Senator, two-term state Senator, and constitutional law scholar, means you’re "untested."

Based upon this logic, I suppose one could say that “Black privilege” is going to an Ivy league school, doing the community service of voter registration, serving as a state senator beholden to questionable alliances and then serving as US Senator beholden to many of those same questionable alliances.   This while thinking that having never worked a “real job”, never been responsible for a budget, never made a single decision of consequence entitles you to the highest office in the free world. Not to mention that the Constitution of the United States does not codify a qualifications list anywhere in it other than the age of said candidate. No matter what one thinks of the qualifications of the candidates, once again privilege and race are irrelevant. The argument that it revolves around “white privilege” is at best a red herring and at worst race bating in the most despicable of manners.

White privilege is being able to be a gun enthusiast and not make people immediately scared of you.

People are not scared of gun enthusiasts of any color anywhere. People are scared of criminals carrying guns into banks, stores, theaters, churches and the like creating havoc and terror in their wake. White privilege and race cannot be blamed for a healthy fear of criminals no matter the race. 

White privilege is being able to have a husband who was a member of an extremist political party that wants your state to secede from the Union, and whose motto was "Alaska first," and no one questions your patriotism or that of your family, while if you're black and your spouse merely fails to come to a 9/11 memorial so she can be home with her kids on the first day of school, people immediately think she’s being disrespectful.

There appears to be no truth to the rumor that Todd Palin was ever a member of the extremist political group AIG. James Mullen of the far left OpEdNews wrote the only story to that effect that I found. Mr. Mullen has zero credentials and apparently no one else picked up the story due its unverifiable nature. In any case, what does the notion of “white privilege” have to do with any of this? First, No one questions Todd Palin’s patriotism because the story has no legs and even if it did it wouldn’t necessarily indicate that he’s somehow un-American. Second, Michele Obama has put herself in the limelight to be scrutinized. She is the one who has made un-American comments both to and about her country. The scrutiny that she gets is scrutiny well deserved and has nothing to do with “white privilege”. This is not racial or about any sort of privilege.

White privilege is being able to make fun of community organizers and the work they do--like, among other things, fight for the right of women to vote, or for civil rights, or the 8-hour workday, or an end to child labor--and people think you’re being pithy and tough, but if you merely question the experience of a small town mayor and 18-month governor with no foreign policy expertise beyond a class she took in college--you’re somehow being mean, or even sexist.

Apparently there is more than one type of “community organizer”. Barak Obama didn’t fight for a woman’s right to vote. He didn’t fight for the 8 hour work day. He had nothing to do with championing child labor protection. Lets take a look at what he actually did. Obama was involved in training social justice activists according to the theories of Saul Alinsky. Alinsky’s writings contain a number of disturbing premises:

“The third rule of the ethics of means and ends is that … the end justifies almost any means.”

“The seventh rule of the ethics of means and ends is that generally success or failure is a mighty detriment of ethics. ... There can be no such thing as a successful traitor, for if one succeeds, he becomes a founding father.”

“The tenth rule of the ethics of means and ends is that you do what you can with what you have and clothe it with moral garments. ... Moral rationalization is indispensable at all tunes of action whether to justify the selection or the use of ends or means.”

Marxism teaches that “truth” is a social construction, determined by consensus. Alinsky teaches the same thing, writing, “An organizer....does not have a fixed truth – truth to him is relative and changing.” The organizer, for whom the “ends justify the means,” can’t be bound by moral absolutes. To support a utilitarian ethics, the truth must be fluid.

Barak Obama was trained as a community organizer by:

ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low- and moderate-income families, working together for social justice and stronger communities.

 But what of ACORN? Last year, The Seattle Times reported the biggest voter-registration fraud scheme in Washington history. Three ACORN employees pleaded guilty, and four more were charged for filling out and submitting more than 1,800 fictitious voter-registration cards during a 2006 registration drive in King and Pierce counties.” (Keith Ervin, “Three plead guilty in fake voter scheme,” 10-30-2007)

This year, an ACORN employee in West Reading, PA, was sentenced for to up to 23 months in prison for identity theft and tampering with records. A second ACORN worker pleaded not guilty to the same charges and is free on $10,000 bail.
Those are convictions from the past year. There are also examples of indictments this year, such as the four ACORN employees in Kansas City charged with identity theft and filing false registrations during the 2006 election and the Reynoldsburg fellow indicted on two felony counts of illegal voting and false registration, after being registered by ACORN to vote in two separate counties. And there are current investigations into ACORN for voter fraud all over the map

– the Milwaukee ACORN for 200 to 300 fraudulent voter registration cards;
– the Cleveland ACORN for its submission of 75,000 voter registrations, many of which are fraudulent;
– the New Mexico ACORN, which claims to have taken 72,000 new voter registrations in the state since January, is under suspicion for 1,100 possibly fraudulent voter   registration cards turned in to the Bernalillo County clerk’s office recently.

These are recent complaints but ACORN’s history is riddled with criminal activity. During the last major election, the Wall Street Journal did a story about ACORN. Four ACORN workers had been indicted by a federal grand jury for submitting false voter registration forms to the Kansas City, Missouri, election board; other ACORN workers were convicted in Wisconsin and Colorado and investigations, at the time the article was written, were under way in Ohio, Tennessee and Pennsylvania. [“The Acorn Indictments,” WSJ 11-3-06]

The Wall Street Journal article points out some additional facts that have particular interest to us, two years later. “Operating in at least 38 states (as well as Canada and Mexico), ACORN pushes a highly partisan agenda, and its organizers are best understood as shock troops for the AFL-CIO and even the Democratic Party. As part of the Fannie Mae reform bill, House Democrats pushed an ‘affordable housing trust fund’ designed to use Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac profits to subsidize ACORN, among other groups. A version of this trust fund actually passed the Republican House and will surely be on the agenda again next year.”

 I for one see no rationality in connecting questions regarding Obama’s community organizing for Alinsky and ACORN with Palin’s foreign policy expertise or lack thereof. If one were to make any case that there is racism going on here it could only be said that Obama’s past efforts were the direct result of a calculated race-based background of racial hatred toward America and white people in particular. There is no “white privilege” here except for the liberal gobbledygook attempting to make an issue where none exists.

White privilege is being able to convince white women who don’t even agree with you on any substantive issue to vote for you and your running mate anyway, because all of a sudden your presence on the ticket has inspired confidence in these same white women, and made them give your party a "second look."

Once again, by the logic expressed in this argument, one can say too that it must be “black privilege” for a candidate to assume that by virtue of the color of his skin, and not the content of his character blacks must surly vote for him because of race! There will always be voters who for whatever reason vote from emotion rather than a thoughtful understanding of the candidates and their positions. White privilege or racism isn’t really the underlying cause even for most of these people.

White privilege is being able to fire people who didn’t support your political campaigns and not be accused of abusing your power or being a typical politician who engages in favoritism, while being black and merely knowing some folks from the old-line political machines in Chicago means you must be corrupt.

The individual referenced here was fired for an actual cause well beyond not supporting a political campaign. The author is disingenuous at best in claiming that Obama’s connections were merely “knowing some folks”. The associations connecting Barak Obama to nefarious political hacks are very well documented. How can it be said to be “white privilege” that drives the discussion of a mans character and core beliefs when the facts are so overwhelming that the person in question is connected (not loosely) to individuals of ill repute; many of whom face long prison sentences? It’s ridiculous to say that any discussion along this line must be racially motivated. No white privilege can mask the truth of Obama’s connections to the ill intended side.

White privilege is being able to attend churches over the years whose pastors say that people who voted for John Kerry or merely criticize George W. Bush are going to hell, and that the U.S. is an explicitly Christian nation and the job of Christians is to bring Christian theological principles into government, and who bring in speakers who say the conflict in the Middle East is God’s punishment on Jews for rejecting Jesus, and everyone can still think you’re just a good church-going Christian, but if you’re black and friends with a black pastor who has noted (as have Colin Powell and the U.S. Department of Defense) that terrorist attacks are often the result of U.S. foreign policy and who talks about the history of racism and its effect on black people, you’re an extremist who probably hates America.

First, America is both in reality and origin a Christian nation. That is indisputable historically. This does not imply in any way that ones voting record reflects upon their eternal status with God. Second, since the definition of Christian is: one in whom Christ lives, then the idea that a Christian serving in public office could, should or would leave God at the door is preposterous. This is neither a black nor a white position; it is the position espoused in the Word of God, the Bible that is the final arbiter of all things Christian. Third, Black Liberation Theology is not grounded in the Bible, as all true doctrine must be in order for it to be taken as God’s plan and direction for Christian behavior. This has nothing whatsoever to do with white privilege or race in any way. These are the rules set down by the creator God for all of us to live by. Not whites alone, not blacks alone or any other group, but all of humanity that puts itself under the authority of the one who made us. 

White privilege is not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is when asked by a reporter, and then people get angry at the reporter for asking you such a "trick question," while being black and merely refusing to give one-word answers to the queries of Bill O’Reilly means you’re dodging the question, or trying to seem overly intellectual and nuanced.

And finally, white privilege is the only thing that could possibly allow someone to become president when he has voted with George W. Bush 90 percent of the time, even as unemployment is skyrocketing, people are losing their homes, inflation is rising, and the U.S. is increasingly isolated from world opinion, just because white voters aren’t sure about that whole "change" thing. Ya know, it’s just too vague and ill-defined, unlike, say, four more years of the same, which is very concrete and certain.
White privilege is, in short, the problem.

I’d like to know just how McCain’s voting record means that it can be said that anyone voting for him must by extension be racist? How is it that our national concerns and challenges, if not met according to a socialist model can then automatically be branded racist? How in the world is international opinion remotely relevant to white privilege in America? I for one say, white privilege is not the problem. I say it is socialist elitism espoused by alleged educated thinkers that is the problem. It is these who foment racism where there is none. It is these who keep the poor down by feeding them the lie that white America is the root of all the evil in their lives. It is these who make a living off of the entitlement victimhood mentality of the less fortunate. It is these who are destroying opportunity and progress for Americas poor.

A BUZZFLASH GUEST CONTRIBUTION
Tim Wise is the author of White Like Me (Soft Skull, 2005, revised 2008), and of Speaking Treason Fluently, publishing this month, also by Soft Skull.

Experience

Obama –

Community Organizer 1985 – 1988 (Excerpted from Malkin Sept. 5 2008) Obama's community organizing days involved training grievance-mongers from the far-left ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). The ACORN mob is infamous for its bully tactics (which they dub "direct actions"); Obama supporters have recounted his role in organizing an ambush on a government planning meeting about a landfill project opposed by Chicago's minority lobbies. ACORN has milked nearly four decades of government subsidies to prop up chapters that promote the welfare state and undermine the free market, as well as some that have been implicated in perpetuating illegal immigration and voter fraud.

Last week, Milwaukee's top election official announced plans to seek criminal investigations of 37 ACORN employees accused of offering gifts to sign up voters (including prepaid gas cards and restaurant cards) or falsifying driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers or other information on voter registration cards.

Last month, a New Mexico TV station reported on the child rapists, drug offenders and forgery convicts on ACORN's payroll. In July, Pennsylvania investigators asked the public for help in locating a fugitive named Luis R. Torres-Serrano, who is accused "of submitting more than 100 fraudulent voter registration forms he collected on behalf of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now to county election officials." Also in July, a massive, nearly $1 million embezzlement scheme by top ACORN officials was exposed.

ACORN's political arm endorsed Obama in February and has ramped up efforts to register voters across the country. In the meantime, completely ignored by the mainstream commentariat and clean-election crusaders, the Obama campaign admitted failing to report $800,000 in campaign payments to ACORN. They were disguised as payments to a front group called "Citizen Services, Inc." for "advance work."

Jim Terry, an official from the Consumer Rights League, a watchdog group that monitors ACORN, noted: "ACORN has a long and sordid history of employing convoluted Enron-style accounting to illegally use taxpayer funds for their own political gain. Now it looks like ACORN is using the same type of convoluted accounting scheme for Obama's political gain." With a wave of his magic wand, Obama amended his FEC forms to change the "advance work" to "get-out-the-vote" work.

Harvard Law Review 1988 - 1991

At the end of his first year Obama was selected as an editor of the Harvard Law Review based on his grades and a writing competition. In his second year he was elected president of the Law Review, a full-time volunteer position functioning as editor-in-chief and supervising the law review's staff of 80 editors. Obama's election in February 1990 as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review was widely reported and followed by several long, detailed profiles. He graduated with a Juris Doctor (J.D.) magna cm laude from Harvard in 1991 and returned to Chicago where he had worked as a summer associate at the law firms of Sidley & Austin in 1989 and Hopkins & Sutter in 1990.

 Project Vote 1993 – 1994

Obama directed Illinois Project Vote from April to October 1992, a voter registration drive with a staff of 10 and 700 volunteers that achieved its goal of registering 150,000 of 400,000 unregistered African Americans in the state, leading Crain's Chicago Business to name Obama to its 1993 list of "40 under Forty" powers to be.

Project Vote often coordinates voter registration campaigns with local chapters of the community organization ACORN and has worked with organizations such as Demos, National Voting Rights Institute, Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law, Fair Elections Legal Network regarding election administration policy and voting rights, including enforcement of the National Voter Registration Act through research, litigation and technical assistance.

Writes Memoirs 1995 age 34

The publicity from his election as the first black president of the Harvard Law Review led to a contract and advance to write a book about race relations. The manuscript was finally published as Dreams from My Father in mid-1995

Teacher / University Chicago School of Law 1996 – 2004 (2002 Law License expires)

Obama taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, as a Lecturer for four years (1992–1996), and as a Senior Lecturer for eight years (1996–2004).

In 1993 Obama joined Davis, Miner, Barnhill & Galland, a 12-attorney law firm specializing in civil rights litigation and neighborhood economic development, where he was an associate for three years from 1993 to 1996, then of counsel from 1996 to 2004, with his law license becoming inactive in 2002.

Illinois State Legislature 1997 – 2004

Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate in 1996. Obama gained bipartisan support for legislation reforming ethics and health care laws. He sponsored a law increasing tax credits for low-income workers, negotiated welfare reform, and promoted increased subsidies for childcare. In 2001, as co-chairman of the bipartisan Joint Committee on Administrative Rules, Obama supported Republican Governor Ryan's payday loan regulations and predatory mortgage lending regulations aimed at averting home foreclosures, and in 2003, Obama sponsored and led unanimous, bipartisan passage of legislation to monitor racial profiling by requiring police to record the race of drivers they detained and legislation making Illinois the first state to mandate videotaping of homicide interrogations. Obama was reelected to the Illinois Senate in 1998, and again in 2002.

US Senator (Junior) 2005 – Present

Obama was sworn in as a senator on January 4, 2005. Obama was the fifth African American Senator in U.S. history, and the third to have been popularly elected. He is the only Senate member of the Congressional Black Caucus. CQ Weekly, a nonpartisan publication, characterized him as a "loyal Democrat" based on analysis of all Senate votes in 2005–2007, and the National Journal ranked him as the "most liberal" senator based on an assessment of selected votes during 2007. Barack Obama has voted with a majority of his Democratic colleagues 96.0% of the time during the current Congress.

Voting records are too long to add here but you can check them for yourself at: http://obama.senate.gov/votes/

Experience

Biden –

US Senator 1973 - Present

Biden trained as a lawyer and became a senator in 1973 at the Constitutional minimum age of 30, making him the fifth-youngest senator in U.S. history. He is a long-time member and current chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee and has worked on resolutions concerning the Yugoslav wars and Iraq War. Biden unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and 2008. 

In 1961, Biden graduated from Archmere Academy in Claymont, Delaware. He attended the University of Delaware in Newark, where he graduated with a double major in history and political science in 1965. He went on to receive his J.D. from Syracuse University College of Law in 1968, and was admitted to the Delaware Bar in 1969. Biden received five student draft deferments during this period, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War.

Biden took office on January 3, 1973. Biden has since won additional terms easily, usually with about 60 percent of the vote. In 2007, Biden reported that he "garnered $67 million worth of projects" for his constituents through congressional earmarks.

Biden serves on the following committees in the 110th U.S. Congress

Committee on Foreign Relations (chairman)

Committee on the Judiciary

Biden has a lifetime average "liberal" score of 77.5 percent, according to a National Journal analysis that places him ideologically among the center of Senate Democrats. The ACLU gives him an 86 percent lifetime score, with a 91 percent score for the current session of Congress.

Experience

McCain –

Military Service 1958 – 1981

McCain graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1958. He retired from the Navy as a captain in 1981. McCain attended the National War College at Fort McNair in Washington, D.C. during 1973–1974. Having been rehabilitated, by late 1974, McCain had his flight status reinstated, and in 1976 he became commanding officer of a training squadron stationed in Florida. He improved the unit's flight readiness and safety records, and won the squadron its first-ever Meritorious Unit Commendation.

US Congress 1982 – 1986

Elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1982, he served two terms representing Arizona's 1st congressional district. He was elected the president of the 1983 Republican freshman class of representatives. McCain was assigned to the Committee on Interior Affairs building up his expertise on issues important to Arizonans such as water rights and other natural resources, public land management, and Native American affairs. 

US Senator 1987 – Present

Upon entering the Senate in 1987, he became a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with whom he had formerly done his Navy liaison work; he also joined the Commerce Committee and the Indian Affairs Committee. McCain was a key member of the 1991–1993 Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. In 1997, McCain became chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee.

Experience

Sarah Palin completed her Bachelor of Science degree in communications-journalism from the University of Idaho, graduating in 1987. In 1988, she worked as a sports reporter for KTUU-TV in Anchorage, Alaska. She also helped in her husband’s family commercial fishing business.

City Council 1992 – 1995

Palin began her political career in 1992, when she ran for a three-year term on the Wasilla city council, supporting a controversial new sales tax and advocating "a safer, more progressive Wasilla." She won, and was re-elected to a second three-year term in 1995.

Mayor 1996 – 2005

In 1996, Palin challenged and defeated incumbent John Stein for the office of mayor. During her first term, the state Republican Party began grooming her for higher office. As mayor of Wasilla, Palin was in charge of the city Police Department, consisting of 25 officers, and Public Works. She was praised for cutting property taxes by 40% while improving roads and sewers and strengthening the Police Department. She also reduced the mayoral salary, reduced spending on the town museum, and opposed a bigger library. Palin ran for re-election against Stein in 1999 and was returned to office by a margin of 909 to 292 votes. Palin was also elected president of the Alaska Conference of Mayors. During her second term as mayor, Palin hired the Anchorage-based lobbying firm of Robertson, Monagle & Eastaugh to lobby for earmarks for Wasilla. The effort was led by Steven Silver, a former chief of staff for Senator Ted Stevens, and it secured nearly $27 million in earmarked funds. The earmarks included $500,000 for a youth shelter, $1.9 million for a transportation hub, $900,000 for sewer repairs, and $15 million for a rail project linking Wasilla and the ski resort community of Girdwood. Some of the earmarks were criticized by Senator McCain. In 2002, Governor Murkowski appointed Palin to the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, where she chaired the Commission from 2003 to 2004, and also served as Ethics Supervisor.  Palin resigned in January 2004 in protest over what she called the "lack of ethics" of fellow Republican members. After resigning, Palin filed formal complaints against the state Republican Party's chairman, Randy Ruedrich, and former Alaska Attorney General Gregg Renkes. She accused Ruedrich, one of her fellow commissioners, of doing work for the party on public time and working closely with a company he was supposed to be regulating. Ruedrich and Renkes both resigned and Ruedrich paid a record $12,000 fine. From 2003 to June 2005, Palin served as one of three directors of "Ted Stevens Excellence in Public Service, Inc.," a 527 group that was designed to serve as a political boot camp for Republican women in Alaska.

Governor 2005 - Present

In 2006, running on a clean-government platform, Palin defeated then-Governor Murkowski in the Republican gubernatorial primary. Her running mate was State Senator Sean Parnell. Senator Stevens made a last-moment endorsement and filmed a TV commercial together with Palin for the gubernatorial campaign. In August, she declared that education, public safety, and transportation would be the three cornerstones of her administration. Despite spending less than her Democratic opponent, she won the gubernatorial election in November, defeating former Governor Tony Knowles 48.3% to 40.9%.

Palin became Alaska's first female governor and, at 42, the youngest in Alaskan history. She is the first Alaskan governor born after Alaska achieved U.S. statehood and the first governor not inaugurated in Juneau; she chose to have the ceremony in Fairbanks instead. She took office on December 4, 2006, and has maintained a high approval rating throughout her term. She sometimes broke with the state Republican establishment. For example, she endorsed Parnell's bid to unseat the state's longtime at-large U.S. Representative, Don Young. Palin also publicly challenged Senator Ted Stevens to come clean about the ongoing federal investigation into his financial dealings. Shortly before his July 2008 indictment, she held a joint news conference with Stevens, described by The Washington Post as being "to make clear she had not abandoned him politically."

(Taken in parts from Wikipedia and Articles by Michelle Malkin)

Much has been written lately regarding Michelle LaVaughn Robinson – Obama’s attitude and heart toward America. We’ve all heard the "For the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country” and similar comments. I have just completed reading her college thesis paper that has been the focus of much attention in this regard. I got my copy from a posting on Politico (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0208/8642.html). The only thing I can say for certain after reading Mrs. Obama’s work is “wow, what a snoozer”. The thesis is nearly 100 pages of convoluted nonsense, ending in conclusions based on dubious research and multiple false interpretations of meaningless numbers.   Jeffry Ressner of The Politico (http://www.politico.com/) writes “Michelle Obama's senior year thesis at Princeton University, obtained from the campaign by Politico, shows a document written by a young woman grappling with a society in which a black Princeton alumnus might only be allowed to remain "on the periphery."” [Italics added] What it really shows is a young angry black racist woman who got away with writing a college thesis based upon nothing but conjecture and opinion. The entire work is based on the notion that if you are Black and go to college, you have an obligation to “help” the poor Blacks who never got the same chance as you. Mrs. Obama’s premise is that Blacks have an inherent and inseparable obligation to use their good fortune as college graduates reaching out for the rest of their lives to the less fortunate. In her introduction Michelle states:

“Earlier in my college career, there was no doubt in my mind that as a member of the Black community I was somehow obligated to this community and would utilize all of my present and future resources to benefit this community first and foremost. My experiences at Princeton have made me far more aware of my “Blackness” than ever before. I have found that at Princeton no matter how liberal and open-minded some of my White professors and classmates try to be toward me, I sometimes feel like a visitor on campus; as if I really didn’t belong. Regardless of the circumstances underwhich I interact with whites at Princeton, it often seems as if, to them, I will always be Black first and a student second.”

Mrs. Obama asserts that for Blacks attending college, there are 2 paths through and beyond. The first and best path is integration. Integration defined as living among them but never becoming one of them. The second and less desirable path is assimilation. Assimilation defined as growing more like them, working in concert for the common good of all America (This would be the Uncle Tom approach to - life according to Michelle). Mrs. Obama believes that in order to be a good Black in society one must never let go of the struggle no matter the opportunities and blessings bestowed upon you. The good Black will always be focused on the struggle and never completely become woven into the fabric of American society because in so doing one losses their Black identity. Blacks who focus on family, career, God or country and become contributing members of the society at large have lost their Blackness.

These experiences have made it apparent to me that the path I have chosen to follow by attending Princeton will likely lead to my further integration and/or assimilation into a White cultural and social structure that will only allow me to remain on the periphery of society; never becoming a full participant. [Italics added]  This realization has presently, made my goals to actively utilize my resources to benefit the Black community more desirable.”

After completing “research” on a mere 89 respondents to her 19 question survey, Michelle dejectedly concludes that:

            “I began this study questioning my own attitudes as a future alumnus. I wondered whether or not my education at Princeton would affect my identification with the Black community. I hoped that these findings would help me conclude that despite the high degree of identification with Whites as a result of the educational and occupational path that Black Princeton alumni follow, the alumni would still maintain a certain level of identification with the Black community. However, these findings do not support this possibility.

            Findings show that some respondents did experience a change in their attitudes over the periods of time indicated in this study. By studying respondents who did change, it was shown that respondents’ experiences while attending Princeton caused their identification with Blacks and the Black community to increase as their identification with Whites and the White community decreased. However, after Princeton, respondents experienced the opposite change in attitude; their identification with Blacks and the Black community decreased as their identification with Whites and the White community increased. Thus, these findings suggest that respondents who experienced change as a result of their Princeton experiences are likely to identify less with Blacks and the Black community in comparison to Whites and the Whites community.”

Thus, Americans have the entire context with which to evaluate the fitness of Michelle Obama to be the next “First Lady” of the United States of America. I realize of course that we are not voting for “First Lady”; but to the extent that personal character pervades the thoughts and feelings of a mother and wife, this thesis provides the background to understanding who she is and from where she is coming. Know too that the modern “First Lady” expects to contribute to the term in office by accepting various rolls up to and including cabinet level input. Note: Hillery Clinton's claim that her "experience" is based upon serving with hubby Bill during his administration.  Michelle claimed that her statements and comments have been taken out of context. These writings belie the voracity of that statement. Michelle Obama is indeed a person who believes firmly in her Black roots, and in the struggle of the Black community as defining her personhood and in the goodness of the cause of fighting for Black struggles over the common American struggle. To Michelle Obama, the fight for Black issues is a higher calling than the fight for a better and more just America. To Michelle Obama, American interests will always take a back seat to the Black agenda. This is not my opinion. This is the conclusion drawn from a thorough dissection of Mrs. Obama’s own writings from not so many years ago. If Barak Obama thinks anything like his wife (and we know he does) there is grave danger ahead should they be elected to the highest office of our land.